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About Betrayal
Before you get your hands dirty in the editor, you need to understand how the game works. When you play a game of Betrayal in the Dark Wood, it will look something like this:
You find yourself at a small outpost located in the middle of the forest. You and the other players (your allies) are each presented with 3-5 options for the type of hero you'd like to play, which is selected from a small building that disappears when you're done. Also present are an altar, a tavern, and a small shop. After a few seconds, the gates surrounding this enclave open up, and you're invited to explore the forest and search for the evil that is corrupting it. You're also encouraged to split up, so that you can cover more ground.
Departing your sanctuary, you enter a maze of narrow paths between dark branches. The layout of the forest (and positions of its secrets) is randomized in each game, so even a veteran player will genuinely need to explore the forest to figure out where things are. The forest is dotted with small groups of evil monsters, some of which you may surprise, and others of which may surprise you. You can accumulate gold and XP from slaying these foes, and occasionally they may drop items, as well.
Should you die, you will reappear at the altar in your base. The delay for resurrection is short, but you return with little health and no mana, and are additionally cursed with a resurrection sickness that temporarily reduces your movement and attack speed, so you'll want to avoid combat for a bit. You can get back into fighting form more quickly if you purchase a round of ale from the tavern, which will increase your health and mana regeneration until the next time you take damage. You may also want to stock up on potions or scrolls of town portal from the shop before you head back out.
As you continue to explore the forest, you'll begin to encounter a variety of strange things--some may be helpful, others disturbing. Enchanted fountains bolster your attributes, restless spirits may lead you to treasure or attack from the shadows, and mysterious portals may serve as one-way roads to glory or ruin. You'll also encounter more powerful monsters, richer rewards, and surer signs of the evil infecting the forest.
But sooner or later, one of you will find the evil. And then...
The secret of the forest is revealed...and one of your own will turn against you, becoming the Traitor. Suddenly, the rules have changed, and now the remaining heroes must find a way to vanquish both the evil of the forest and their turncoat friend.
This part of the game is different each time; there are a variety of different scenarios, selected at random. Each side is assigned varying goals and abilities depending on the scenario. Perhaps the Traitor is trying to pick off the heroes one at a time before they can locate and destroy the source of his powers; perhaps the heroes need to seal off a magical portal before time runs out; the possibilities are vast.
Whatever happens, the heroes will need to work together, or the darkness will take them all.
There are a variety of potential advantages if this map is selected as the basis for the remainder of the 2008 Mapathon. These include:
Room to Grow:
In addition to the heroes, items, monsters, and terrain features that many
maps would allow you to add, this map also features the opportunity to create
unique events and even entire custom scenarios, complete with their own story,
objectives, and special rules. This allows ongoing contributions from a
wider range of skills than would be possible in most maps. Read more about
expansion opportunities here.
Additionally, this map is carefully architected to protect itself from its own success: adding more content doesn't overwhelm the player with an unrealistic number of choices, or alter the pacing and feel of the game by throwing new things at the player more and more rapidly. Instead, the map is designed to utilize only a random subset of its content in each game. Therefore, as new things get added, it increases variability and helps ensure that the game never gets old, but it won't ruin the game for new or casual players.
Pick-Up-And-Play:
Newbies don't get crushed. All players begin on the same side, the
game starts slow and simple, and there's a relatively small number of options to
choose between when the game first starts. When the Haunt begins, there
are new rules to learn, but that's part of the fun, and if we create enough
Haunts, then even experienced players may not have seen the particular one that
gets picked--they'll certainly have a hard time developing stock strategies to
use on every single one.
Balance Safety Buffer:
Experienced players can't memorize all the good places to go or things to
do, because they change every game--even if someone discovers that, say, a
particular hero or item is overpowered, he can't systematically exploit it,
because it won't show up every time. There's a lot of random stuff going
on in the background, which provides a scale against which power differences
will naturally be measured--and it's a pretty big scale, meaning that if one
hero or tactic is a little more powerful than another, it may take a long time
before players even notice. This means the designers don't need to
meticulously balance every little thing; the damage caused by a particular
imbalance in this map will be tiny compared to the same imbalance in, say, a
typical hero arena.
Distinctive Replayability:
Different every time. The second time you play, you probably won't
even have the option of using the same hero again. You'll explore a
new map, fight new monsters, collect new items, and be confronted with a new
scenario, for which you'll need to devise new tactics. Even if you get the
same scenario, or the same hero, it may feel quite different in a new context
(different allies and enemies, different items, etc.). You only experience
a small fraction of the possible content in each play-through. If we
design good content, this game isn't getting old any time soon.
Lots of things can be easily added to this map, using a variety of mapping skills:
Terrain:
As in most maps, there's opportunity to extend and beautify the playing area. Also, as in most maps, the terrain is interconnected, so if different people edit overlapping segments of terrain, it may be difficult to merge their changes. For the contest, this might be handled by having people "reserve" particular sections to work on, or by letting just one person at a time work on the basic terrain while everyone else participates in a differently-themed contest.
Betrayal also features a terrain generation system where various interesting features and objects can be slotted into different "zones" scattered around the map. Contributors can write triggers that will place particular terrain designs (also shops, fights, events, etc.) into random places each game.
For more information about how terrain works, read here.
Heroes:
Each player in Betrayal chooses a hero at the start of the game to be that player's avatar. Heroes can have individualized stats and abilities, similar to many other maps. Newly-created heroes can easily be added to the list of options that will randomly be made available to players.
For more information about how heroes work, read here.
Monsters:
Groups of monsters are placed randomly in the forest. There are several categories for monster difficulty, into which new monsters can easily be added, so they'll show up in the randomly-generated forest. You can also create specialized monsters that don't appear in the normal monster pools, but which are used in specific events or scenarios.
For more information about how monsters work, read here.
Items:
Items can be acquired from shops, as random drops from slain monsters, and as a result of special events. When you create a new item, it's easy to add it to a shop, or to a list of random drops.
For more information about how items work, read here.
Special Events and Features:
Scripted events can be assigned to random zones, and triggered when players enter. Traps, secrets, puzzles, and just plain spooky stuff are all possible.
Zones can also contain other unique objects and features. You could create a particularly fearsome monster, a forgotten arcane lab, a hidden shop, or just an interesting landmark.
For more information about how events work, read the terrain section.
Haunts:
One Haunt is selected at random to be played each game. Each Haunt can have its own story, objectives, and special rules. The sky's the limit.
For more information about how Haunts work, read here.
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